


didn’t know rebellion could taste so sweet

by Yellow_Bird_On_Richland



Series: It's different and it's working, oh, you make me nervous (the Annie/Britta AU Collection) [1]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Britta Perry, Character Studies--Annie Edison and Britta Perry, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Follow-Up to S1E15 Romantic Expressionism, Hints of Troy/Abed, Mutual Pining, lesbian Annie Edison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24930109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yellow_Bird_On_Richland/pseuds/Yellow_Bird_On_Richland
Summary: Four times Annie and/or Britta consider what it would be like to share a kiss, and the first time they do something about it.
Relationships: Annie Edison/Britta Perry, Annie Edison/Vaughn Miller
Series: It's different and it's working, oh, you make me nervous (the Annie/Britta AU Collection) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1835497
Comments: 12
Kudos: 85





	1. Annie

**Author's Note:**

> This story is going to be a handful of loosely connected snapshots, starting with The Look between Annie and Britta at the end of Romantic Expressionism, which was more or less the inspiration for writing these two together.

"Maybe we're not a family, maybe it's more complicated. Because unlike a _real_ family," Jeff continues, "there's nothing to stop any one of us from looking at any of the others as a sexual prospect."

Annie resists the urge to let out a snort. _Of course_ Jeff Winger would reduce everything to sex—he'd love that Oscar Wilde quote from her 19th century lit elective, that "everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power" line—even though she and Vaughn hadn't gotten to that yet. Hadn't kissed yet, either. They were on track to, though, at some point, before Jeff and Britta interfered, and Vaughn had been nothing but respectful about waiting. They were good together; he'd helped her mellow out a bit and she'd encouraged him to take his music a smidge more seriously. He was a bit of an oddball, yeah, but isn't the point of college to try new things, to escape one's comfort zone?

They were a perfectly Normal couple, all things considered. And that's what Annie wants, what she's supposed to want.

" _Right?"_ she asks herself.

She keeps her eyes glued to her lap as everyone else's flicker and dance to and fro, trying to sniff out sexual interest. Meanwhile, Annie wrestles with her own question in more depth. Unlike almost every other aspect of her life, from cheerleading to planning Adderall pick-ups to scheduling her classes at Greendale, she plunges into relationships a tad quickly. Maybe even a touch impulsively, sure. But that's a good thing—she didn't get with Vaughn just to prove to herself that she could, she did it because she wanted _him_. And being wanted back felt delightful, she'd admit, especially after she'd fruitlessly pined over Troy for way too long.

" _Plus you're doing much better with impulse control since high school,"_ Annie silently reminds and praises herself. _"There's a happy medium, because you can't plan out everything, either. After all, you met all these people randomly, and they've become your main friend group here. Even if things sometimes get strange."_

Like right now, when she can almost feel Abed's eyebrows wiggling suggestively at the entire room, trying to convert subtext to text.

Annie's not planning to look up, since she'd much rather sit this awkwardness out, but she can sense someone's gaze on her, focused and insistent. It doesn't feel like Pierce's pervy ogling—there's a reason she always wears a tank top under button-up blouses now—and yeah, ok, she's curious, so she raises her head. She figures it'll be Jeff looking at her.

It's not.

Britta's eyeing her intensely, to the point that Annie can't help but return the eye contact and hone in on her. She sees her hands clutched tightly together, admires how her cascading blonde curls frame her face just a tad messily. Notices, too, the coordination between her black shirt and her necklace, a pair of matching V's. She tries, and fails, to ignore how the necklace hangs almost all the way down to her cleavage, wonders how much or how often Britta wields her sexuality as a means of power, whether that's an intentional use of her femininity or just a side effect of confidence, of being so self-assured of her own attractiveness.

These are really _not_ questions Annie should be asking herself, so she redirects her gaze to Britta's face.

" _Just offer a friendly, perfunctory, non-flirty smile, move on to the next person, and then this strange scene will fade out,"_ Annie reassures herself.

Except Annie's never really looked at Britta that closely, scrutinized her the way Jeff undoubtedly has many (too many) times, so her breath catches as she studies the ripe fullness of Britta's pink lips, and her pulse plays jump rope when she sees her own reflection in dark blue eyes that flash like blown glass.

Her eyebrows lift a touch and her smile feels hopeful; she must be on the verge of another nervous breakdown because there's no reason for that and her face won't follow her mind's repeated, increasingly frantic command to perform a simple, casual smile. Britta mirrors the way she's leaning and this somehow feels like Something and Annie's brain doesn't help matters when it pipes up, _"You could kiss her, you know. Transitive property."_

" _What?"_ she asks incredulously.

" _Britta kissed Vaughn, so if Vaughn kisses you, you'll have indirectly kissed Britta,"_ the math part of her brain summarizes.

For having a textbook Type A personality, Annie's always possessed an abundance of imagination. It jumps off the leash at the unexpected conclusion—she wonders if it might be better classified as a revelation, for future re-visiting—and easily pulls her into a daydream about pulling Britta close by the shoulders of her ever-present pleather jacket on some Saturday night.

In Britta's apartment, maybe.

Away from the rest of group, definitely.

Delighting in the syrupy sting of bourbon or the sharpness of lime and tequila in Britta's kiss as they watch trashy TV together.

The scene isn't at all the kind of romance she normally desires, and yet…

Britta's gasp jerks Annie out of her reverie and she responds, reflexively, with one of her own before her eyes snap over to Troy, eager to explore safer territory. He arches an eyebrow in suspense before shaking his head. She rolls her eyes and carefully directs her gaze to Troy's right, not wanting to make eye contact with Pierce. Her cheeks are still flooded with color when she notices Abed give a tiny, almost imperceptible glance at Britta, followed by an equally subtle nod in her direction.

She feels that Something transform from a shimmering, almost silly moment into a more solid, potential reality at his move, even as she turns back to Jeff. His gaze warms her, but it's not hungry, and she returns what she hopes is a similarly affectionate look. The corners of his mouth turn up in a slight smile, not his usual smirk, before he breaks eye contact and receives one of Abed's over-zealous eyebrow waggles.

Annie closes her eyes and forces the words out, her gaze boring through the table; she's not sure she'll be able to make proper eye contact with any of these people for the rest of the day, at least. "Why are we even talking about this?"

"Because you started having sex with Britta's ex-boyfriend," Jeff rejoins.

"What?! We haven't even kissed," Annie responds indignantly.

"That doesn't mean you're not having sex," Pierce interjects, as Troy gives a sage nod in agreement.

Then they're interrupted by the sound of a guitar. They go outside, with Annie leading the pack, and Vaughn's there singing a song about her, with her name in it, and…it's exactly what she wanted.

She turns back to Britta.

"Vaughn wants to show me a cloud that looks like a pumpkin. If that's okay." She finds it's easier to address a spot on Britta's forehead rather than look her in the eyes as she says it.

"Annie, it's more than okay." Britta's smile is open, genuine, and dear God she's noticing just how brightly it shines now, too. "Please date Vaughn. Or anyone else outside this creepy circle."

Annie nods. Vaughn. He's what she wants. A fairly normal, caring boyfriend at this surreal community college. They fit together; he's right for her.

She's gotten much better at reading social cues since high school, at knowing what to say and how to say it, so it doesn't take much effort for her to joke, "I wouldn't hang out with you guys if you were _actually_ creepy. Trust me. I have good taste."

It appeases her friends and pleases her…boyfriend all in one fell swoop.

Annie tells herself the discomfort with calling Vaughn her boyfriend is only because they've just resumed dating as of roughly five seconds ago. She tells herself she shuts her eyes when he lifts her up and spins her around in a hug so she won't get dizzy.

She tells herself she doesn't really want to kiss Britta Perry.

Because she doesn't. Right?


	2. Britta

" _You're an idiot,"_ Britta hisses to herself. _"A fucking pathetic idiot."_

She manages to play off her fancy dress as a friendly prank—"Jeff drunk-dialed me and couldn't remember the message he left. I wanted to pretend he asked me to the dance to make him freak out, haha"—and thanks the universe that Slater can't tell she barely choked out an awkward laugh. In fact, Britta even _helps_ Jeff make up with his precious professor girlfriend by only playing the saving grace portion of his voicemail and ending it before his ramblings get far too incoherent. And far too intimate for someone who's supposedly "just my really good friend."

Count it as her good deed of the month. Maybe double it since she normally has trouble being anything but selfish. Except she's decked out in a slinky red dress that's grinding up against Greendale's dress code and she's wearing more lipstick tonight than she has in months. She'd insisted getting dressed to the nines was just a way to mess with Jeff, but after catching a glimpse of herself in the glass doors leading to the auditorium, she couldn't keep up the façade.

Abed would probably tell her she'd gotten sucked into performative femininity, and while the guy relied entirely too much on television to inform his social interactions, he'd be right, in this case.

Britta is barely herself these days, and right now, she bears a disturbing resemblance to the protagonists in the romance novels Annie still secretly reads in the library from time to time. She gets light blackmail on everyone, it's not totally personal. And, even worse than merely looking like one of those one-note ladies, Britta _feels_ like one. The way her stomach swooped for a second as Jeff glanced back at her when he left nearly made her gag.

Britta's piled together a mess of mistakes in her life, often stacking them up haphazardly like she's drunkenly playing Jenga at the Red Door, but she's never cheated. Even if she's seen several relationships built on bullshit foundations. Such as a taboo teacher/student affair, for a completely random example.

" _You know, you sometimes think you and Jeff would be good together because you're both too cool for all the vulnerability of real, adult relationships,"_ Britta dogs herself as she treks over to the bathroom.

"But what if that just makes the two of you assholes?" she asks herself quietly in the mirror.

She blots some of her lipstick off until it's less of a desperately lonely, fire engine red, closer to her day-to-day pink. It doesn't match her dress exactly, anymore, but that suits her better. She undoes her updo, too, relishing in how her free hair falls over her neck, covers it like armor, and she makes a snap decision.

She's done trying to get with a guy who'd kept her listed as "hot blonde Spanish class" _months_ after they'd established their friendship. She'll leave the luring to Slater.

Britta Perry is no one's siren.

**

The sight of Pierce and Troy serving as cross-dressed arm candy for Chang's nefarious revenge plot ought to disturb her more than it does (and should probably be illegal, too), but she finds herself cracking up at them, instead.

She convinces Chang to let Troy have a break for a few songs and they dance easily together in a kind of reprisal from their recital.

"So, you got a fun late night message from Jeff?" Troy quips.

Britta shakes her head. "More like an extreme stream of consciousness. Unless you heard otherwise?"

Troy gives a noncommittal shrug. "Abed left me a kinda weird message…he mentioned something about you and Jeff being magnets, then talked me through how he was playing Super Mario World for, like, fifteen minutes."

Britta frowns. "We're magnets?"

Troy shrugs again. "Don't know what to tell ya, Britta. Abed can be a bit difficult to understand normally. Drunk, doubly so." He rolls his eyes as Chang calls over to him. "Gotta get back to El Tigre. Thanks for the reprieve and the dancing, though."

"Sure thing. You look foxy in that outfit, by the way," she tells him, smirking as he slinks back to Chang.

She snags an IPA from the open bar—shoutout to Greendale's lax on-campus alcohol policies—and plops down next to Annie at a table, greeting her with a quick "hey" before taking a slug of her drink.

Annie glances at the bottle. Looks away. Glances at it again. Asks hesitantly, "Can I try some of that?"

"You're not gonna like it," Britta warns her. "IPAs are an acquired taste."

"Well, how can you know that I won't like it if I don't try it?" Annie answers back.

Britta laughs at the sassy response—it sounds like something she would've said at that age. After the first few weeks of being miss goody two shoes during the fall semester, Annie's shown off her spunkier side more and more, so Britta passes the bottle over to her.

She sips daintily and coughs it down, and Britta can't help the shit-eating grin that comes over her face when she's proven right.

"From my partying experience, most…" she's about to say "kids" but remembers Annie's a bit sensitive to the term, so she catches herself and continues, "most young adults don't like IPAs at first. Stick to lighter wheat beers and pilsners first if you're gonna have beer," she advises Annie. "And for the love of God, don't subject yourself to Natty, Busch, and Keystone. You basically have a network of alcohol suppliers within your study group who can get you craft beer or mid-tier liquor."

She thinks for a second—okay, Shirley would probably say no to getting booze for any minor, and the thought of letting Pierce buy anyone intoxicating substances, let alone Annie, is a touch terrifying. "Or, you have Jeff and me, at least," Britta amends. "Maybe Abed, too."

Annie laughs lightly at that. "So the Greendale parents," she puts air quotes around the phrase, "are supporting underage drinking?"

"First off, you know we're terrible role models," Britta points out, getting another laugh from Annie. "Second, America's alcohol laws are stupid and just encourage binge drinking for people in their late teens and super early twenties. And I'm not saying you _have to_ drink. But, you know, if you ever want to, I'd rather you're able to do so responsibly at home rather than at some raunchy house party, getting served jungle juice out of a trash can. Trust me, you can do without those college memories."

"Thanks for that, Britta," Annie responds. "And you're not terrible role models. I'd be a bit lost without you. And the rest of the group, too," she adds after a pause. "But you're sometimes the easiest to relate to."

"Don't mention it," Britta answers a touch gruffly, trying to hide her pleasure at Annie's comment.

Looking back at how she ended up at Greendale, she wishes someone would've told her not to drop out of high school to impress Radiohead. She wishes she could've had, if not a mentor (the term's always sounded a bit stuffy and pretentious to her), someone a bit older in her life who at least sort of knew what the fuck they were doing. So she's paying it forward now, as much as she can. Despite Annie's kind remarks, Britta's not sure if she's worth admiring. But maybe she'll start trying to believe she is. For Annie's sake, at least.

" _You've always liked proving people wrong,"_ Britta murmurs internally. _"Why not try that with yourself?"_

" _I'll give it a shot when the need arises,"_ she decides. For the moment, she's more than happy to people-watch with Annie, with occasional visits from Pierce and Troy.

Annie seems content, too, as she leaves and eventually comes back to the table, smiling softly after sharing a handful of dances with Vaughn. Britta catches a snatch of their conversation—something about him needing to call it an early night to get up for an ultimate Frisbee tournament tomorrow morning—just before he departs.

"So things are good with him?" Britta asks Annie once she sits back down. "Again, sorry I was kinda a dick about you dating him."

"Yeah, definitely," Annie nods absentmindedly. "He's a good guy."

She doesn't go into any more detail, but then again, the two of them aren't especially close, and they're not in the sanctity of the girls' bathroom, so Britta doesn't push.

Later on, she can't help but notice how Annie perks up at the opening drum beats of what sounds, to her pop-punk attuned ears, like "Dance, Dance." The table cloth shifts ever so slightly against her legs as Annie starts tapping her right foot along to the bass line, and she can easily see the start of a tiny head bob. But all the movements are quiet, as if she's almost nervous about getting caught liking music.

Something clicks in Britta's head just before she giggles at Annie and asks, "Is this the kind of music you weren't allowed to listen to in high school, but got into anyway?"

Annie nods, still in time with the music, and that's enough to get Britta to her feet. "C'mon, we're dancing to this." She bends over to unstrap her heels and slides them off, under the table. When she gets up, dusting off the bottom of her dress, Annie's doe eyes are absolutely transfixed on her.

Britta frowns. "You okay?"

Her words jerk Annie out of an almost trance-like state. "Yeah. Yeah. Let's—let's dance, Britta!"

She'd never guess you could apply swing dance steps to Fall Out Boy, but Annie's full of surprises.

"You've got pretty good moves for a nerd," Britta comments.

"Well, we had to leave a lot of room for Jesus and the Holy Spirit at high school dances, so…" she's got a quick wit, sometimes, and amidst their laughter, Britta feels something like a genuine smile break across her face as the chorus hits.

And this hardly counts as being a mentor, at all, but there are some skills she's honed from years of going to rock concerts that Annie definitely doesn't have. She thinks maybe, just maybe, they could be useful to help the tightly wound brunette in front of her find a bit of slack once in a while.

So she asks, still grinning, "You ever thrashed before, Edison?"

Annie tilts her head and gives it a shake, her deep blue eyes crinkled with a touch of confusion as she repeats uncertainly, "Have I ever thrashed?"

Some tiny part of Britta's brain whispers, _"Admit it, she's kinda cute."_

"I'll take that as a no, so watch and learn." Britta takes a step back and goes into a headbang, blond curls bouncing everywhere, arms splaying forward a little bit like she's swimming.

She can feel Annie's eyes on her, clearly trying to study…whatever it is she's doing, Britta's honestly not sure herself, but she keeps up the frenetic movement for another few seconds until the music tells her it's time to stop. Or until she can dislodge that stray thought that Annie is cute.

Unfortunately, the way Annie asks, "So, what is the first step in thrashing, Britta?" as if they're in their regular study group going over notes for a quiz only further cements the fact that she's adorable.

She gives a bemused head shake. "There's no real steps or moves, exactly. Just loosen up those limbs and jam out to the music! Like this…" Before she can stop herself, Britta's got both hands on Annie's shoulders, gently pushing them down. "Relax your shoulders a bit, ok?"

Annie nods, and Britta swears she can feel some of the tension drain out of her. "And then…just go kinda crazy?" she asks.

"Exactly! Don't really think about it. Cut loose," Britta replies as the ending of the second chorus swells in with Pat Stump singing, _"This is the way they'd love if they knew/How misery loved me."_

She watches Annie gathering herself up with something like determination, taking a few, deep steadying breaths during the post-chorus guitar part. Britta's about to bust out laughing, because no one else can get in their own head the way the diminutive brunette does, when Annie takes a jab step forward and starts headbanging, her hair flipping wildly, going perfectly in time with the bridge like there's nothing to it.

What the fuck is Britta supposed to do besides join in?

**

The loss of control—brown hair falling messily over her forehead, forming a bit of a veil over her blazing blue eyes, her cheeks flushed redder than her dress, the sleeves of her dress sliding the tiniest bit down her shoulders—is dangerously attractive on Annie, even more so when she sings along, _"Why don't you show me the little bit of spine you've been saving for his mattress? I only want sympathy in the form of you crawling into bed with me."_

She cocks her head cheekily to the side after singing the second line and catches Britta's gaze, holds it with a ferocity she didn't know was there. It reminds Britta of how the two of them locked eyes yesterday after Jeff's "sexual prospects" comment.

She hadn't meant, exactly, to look so suddenly at Annie in that moment. But she was sandwiched between Abed and Jeff, and had already shared awkward glances with both of them. Going back to either one might suggest a non-existent attraction. And her other options were Shirley (she's sweet as pie, but no), Pierce ( _super_ no), and Troy (he and Abed basically belong to each other; the rest of them already know this).

But then Annie had given that little head tilt, and an open smile, and Britta had felt herself following Annie's lead for a second.

Like she's doing again, right now, mirroring Annie's coy smile.

And she finds herself wondering, for a second, what a first kiss with Annie Edison might be like.

" _Probably sugary sweet,"_ Britta guesses. _"Not my style. At all."_

But she swears Annie bats her eyelashes at her for half a second, and maybe she's not quite the naïve romantic everyone thinks she is. Maybe a first kiss with her wouldn't be totally saccharine, would be harder, hotter, messier than Britta would have guessed.

She doesn't know why her brain's taking her down this path, because there's no way anything will happen between them.

" _Annie has a boyfriend, dummy,"_ she reminds herself. _"And she's probably totally straight, anyway."_

Britta gives her head another shake in the guise of a final closing headbang as the song fades out. Tells herself she's just off her game because of that weird ending bit of the episode yesterday and the whole jumbled sludge of emotions she suffered through today.

She tells Annie, "You wouldn't be too out of place at a rock show. I'm impressed."

Annie chirps back, "Thanks! It was…it was fun to sort of lose it, actually," she confesses with a grin. "Maybe I should try it more often."

That has to be in the top 5 most obvious cues Britta's ever gotten to exit a scene. To counsel Annie and take her leave.

She ignores it and ad-libs. Sits back down at the table. Thinks about getting another beer, goes for water instead. "It's not something I'd recommend all the time, but, yeah. Once in a while, definitely."

She can practically hear Abed saying, _"Nice job inserting advice that goes for both yourself and the character you're talking to. A hallmark of efficient dialogue."_

Britta keeps off her feet for most of the rest of the night, but when Troy asks both her and Annie to join him for a joking dance to "You Belong With Me," she says yes. Which seems totally fine, at first. Except when she feels an electric shock race up her arm as Annie casually grabs her wrist at some point while they all boogie.

So Britta has to remind herself, again, that she's dealt with a ton of weird shit over the past day or so—to say nothing of her day-to-day life with the merry band of misfits in the study group—and that's the only reason she's feeling…different toward Annie now.

Because, otherwise, that would mean she just out-and-out wants to kiss Annie Edison. And there's no way she wants that.

Right?


	3. Annie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is jumping forward from S1 to S2E15, "Early 21st Century Romanticism."

There's just been a lot to deal with around Valentine's Day this year.

The fight with Jeff over staging an intervention to address Pierce's painkiller use (or, more accurately, abuse) hadn't been the best start to the day. Adding on Britta and Page using each other for some weird display of wokeness made things even more uncomfortable. Annie's never been the best at developing friendships, but two people becoming friends as an egotistical testament to their radical ideals strikes her as a tad wrong. Even though it's a classic miscommunication trope, what with the shared and incorrect assumptions about each other's sexuality, Abed doesn't comment on it. When Annie mentions this over lunch with her favorite boys, he and Troy both sigh.

"The trope is meant to be humorous," Troy responds, giving a blank stare at the Caesar salad and French fries in front of him. "This isn't."

"This is just sad," Abed adds solemnly as he swipes a few fries off Troy's plate and smears them with ketchup before popping them in his mouth. "And backwards."

Annie doesn't need to ask what he means by that.

She hopes that this particularly weird, cringe-inducing incident will resolve itself easily, but she knows better by now.

Instead, as expected, it gets exponentially worse at the school's Valentine's Day party—Jeff made the right call with not attending this catastrophe, even if Chang invaded his apartment and brought some partygoers, per his latest volley of increasingly irritated texts that Annie's ignoring. Annie finds herself next to Claire, the only other person who truly understands what's happening as Page and Britta, um, "dance" with each other.

"It hurts to watch them do this," Claire whispers, and Annie nods in agreement, because the ridiculous foundation of Page and Britta's faux friendship is benefitting absolutely no one.

" _And because you want to be the one out there dancing with Britta, don't you? A little repeat of last Valentine's Day?"_ her mind whispers. _"Shame she's not wearing something more revealing tonight, though."_

This is normally the point where Annie represses her thoughts and chastises herself for them. More often than not, the resulting self-hatred drives her to find some guy to flirt with to prove to herself that she's straight, that she's normal.

She's waiting for that feeling to strike, phone in hand already to ward it off by texting Jeff if she can come to the party, but it doesn't.

A high-pitched giggle escapes her lips as she realizes Britta _was_ right about her dating habits, though she didn't want to admit it at the time. Granted, it's a small sample size, but both Jeff and Vaughn _were_ Britta-adjacent.

That new train of thought goes off the rails when she hears Pierce cry "Lesbians!" and point at Britta and Page as if he's gawking at some rare bird at a zoo. Okay, it's true, he's high as a kite on painkillers and the two ladies are a pair of misguided, ill-informed idiots, but they don't deserve that.

A retort rises in Annie's throat and worms its way to the back of her mouth. Venom coats her tongue like tar and she is _thisclose_ to letting her long-standing anger with Pierce's misogynistic bullshit boil over in a torrent of swears. But she swallows the barbs down. She's nothing if not polite in public. For now.

She watches Britta and Page share an awkward kiss in a poorly-conceived stunt-turned-trainwreck and hears an "I've never done this before. Wait, what?!" from both parties just before they start spewing insults at each other.

All the day's garbage, combined, makes Annie want to barf the contents of her heart out in a bathroom stall. It gets her to briefly contemplate what a Britta detox would entail. Deleting all the damn Radiohead songs off her iTunes, for starters. Taking an extra-long shower and then compounding her wasteful water use by grilling a dry aged steak, maybe.

The thoughts of what she could do to spite Britta only serve to keep her in the forefront of Annie's mind, and she wants nothing more than to get the blonde out of her fucking head for a second.

" _So…no go on the detox, then,"_ Annie thinks to herself.

Maybe she could travel back to a time before she'd started considering Britta in this light. Before she'd started consistently thinking of this cool, irritating, gorgeous, semi-authentic/semi-failed activist in the same way she'd once idly daydreamed about Troy.

Annie's already gained entry into a few fucked-up liminal spaces—half-wanting Jeff and half-detesting him (her stomach churns when she reflects on the way he looked at her so long ago in the study room when she let her hair down, because it's how she occasionally glances at Britta: all hunger); at college, but not really "at college" the way most people think of it, a proper four-year university. So she supposes it's only natural to now stumble onto the realization that she may not be entirely straight. Or, if she's being completely honest, to actually lend credence to that thought, to let it exist in her mind instead of flushing it out immediately and replacing it with swift, righteous self-loathing, another trait she shares with Britta.

Annie's caught flickers of recognition that she might not be totally straight in the past, like the white dots that float in the edges of your vision momentarily after a flash photo. How the sole time she'd had sex with Cole in high school felt both perfunctory and like a weird, out-of-body experience, as if some part of her subconscious knew instinctively that, more than anything else, she only wanted to passively observe the act, to experience it from a distance so she could check it off a box afterwards. How the girls on the cheerleading squad mocked her for being a klutz and she went along with it because the alternative was admitting she'd gotten distracted by her friend Kayla's long blonde hair and even longer legs when they were supposed to be executing cartwheels.

Those scenes are foggy, blurry thanks to the passing of time, but her recent chronicles with Britta pop out in screaming color, burning red to match the color of that dress she wore to the last Valentine's Day dance. Annie knows she wore it for Jeff, but that didn't stop her from appreciating it.

Despite Britta's tough exterior, her face still crumbles as she comes up to Annie after her falling out with Page and mutters, dejected and embarrassed, "Page is straight."

"Really?" Annie tries to feign surprise, but she's not always the best actress, so she makes up for it by adding, with a conciliatory shoulder shrug, "Well, when she was gay, I thought it was really cool of you to make out with her."

Britta's face cracks again, but this time it breaks into something like relief, and she's falling in for a hug seconds after she says, "Thanks, Annie."

Annie's wrapped her arms tight around Britta's back, her chin is resting on her shoulder, and she knows, deep in her bones, there's no way she'll ever be able to go through a Britta detox.

"Come on, kiss her!"

Britta responds to the heckling by turning toward whatever low-life yelled it, a look of disgust on her face, but she's still kept her grip on Annie. The fingers of her right hand are applying gentle pressure on her upper arm, just below the short sleeve of her dress. Britta turns back toward Annie, shaking her head bemusedly.

Annie's usually the one to chart out a plan before she acts, but there's no thinking involved as she flutters her eyes closed and dips her head toward Britta.

When this news inevitably winds its way to the group, she knows they'll think she's reacting to peer pressure, to whatever guy yelled a second ago; it'll make for a neat narrative for Abed and they won't have any reason to look any deeper into what would otherwise be a scandalous girl-on-girl kiss. She'll find a way to deal with Shirley and Pierce if she needs to. If they need to.

"Annie!" Britta's voice comes out panicked, and her hands jolt against her, pushing her shoulders back a touch, and…oh.

_Oh._

Britta's only kissing one girl tonight.

Fuck.

Annie plays off the rejection as coolly as possible, tries her best to look shocked at her own completely unexpected behavior. "Sorry…don't know what I was thinking," she laughs breathlessly; it's easy to do, between her heart stopping for a second and the air failing to escape her lungs.

Britta's hand is _still_ lingering on her upper arm and she's rubbing it in small circles now as she answers sympathetically, "It's not your fault some men are _fucking pigs_." Britta raises her voice as she delivers the final two words and goddammit, indignation looks amazing on her, coloring her cheeks, setting her blue eyes ablaze. Annie can see why Jeff picks so many arguments.

She goes on, "I know I fucked up with Page, I was an idiot, but that doesn't mean men should leer at the sight of two women kissing or worry, like _idiotic assholes,_ that the sight of two men kissing might turn them gay. You know?"

"Yeah," Annie manages a nod even as disappointment burns through her like acid. "I gotta go to the bathroom," she mutters, sliding out of Britta's grasp and making her way toward the auditorium exit.

She finds Abed and Troy standing a bit outside the doors in a close embrace, almost a mirror of how she and Britta had been wrapped around each other moments ago.

"Guys?" she asks softly, and despite her best efforts to keep it together, she must look a mess, because they separate without saying a word and offer her a spot in a group hug.

The pain is still so damn raw, so unexpected, but at least it's real. That's something. She can own it, now, as part of who she is, rather than wistfully longing for a normal that doesn't fit her anymore. Or maybe never did.

Despite the fact that she's aching, something in Annie's chest unknots as she realizes what she's gonna do. She takes a deep breath—she's glad it's the two of them who are going to be the first to know, since she can't very well share this piece of information with Britta right now—and says, "Abed…Troy…I've got something to tell you. I like girls."


	4. Annie/Britta

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had planned to alternate between Annie and Britta’s perspectives for each chapter, but I’ve found that writing Annie comes more naturally to me. I’m starting off writing from her vantage point in this chapter, followed by Britta’s POV. The story’s resolution will have thoughts from both of them, most likely.
> 
> Now AU-ish. Not based on a specific episode, but set sometime during season 3, before Troy enrolls in Greendale’s AC Repair school.

It's odd, Annie thinks, how rarely the group meets anywhere outside their sterilized study room or the unruly cafeteria. For a place called "Greendale," they don't venture outdoors a whole lot, but it feels like the environment's rewarding them for doing so today.

After all, what better backdrop could there be for a Friday night car-wrecking fundraiser than the school's old football field, abandoned a few years ago in favor of a brand-spanking-new, outdoor, multi-sport turf complex? Because obviously, the need for lavish facilities—for community college sports programming—trumped students wanting updated textbooks or an expanded library.

Of all the tastes of standard college life, the glorification of sports teams is one Annie could've done without. Thanks, Dean Pelton.

Still, it's in the low 70s in early September, there's only a slight hint that the trees will soon be fully cloaked in the colors of autumn, and her first bio assignment went surprisingly well. She's got five members of the study group by her side, plus her entry ticket to help smash a decommissioned 1993 Oldsmobile into oblivion to raise funds for the aforementioned library expansion.

She tries not to think too much about where Britta may be today, as she'd been non-committal about attending. Annie finds compartmentalizing her into just the study group setting helps her cope with what is clearly, by now, an unrequited attraction. So, naturally, Jeff mentions, with his trademark snark, "Y'know, Annie, I'm not sure why the fundraising committee didn't recruit you and Britta for more oil wrestling."

"Or mud wrestling," Pierce chimes in.

"It would be demeaning, but that would make a killing on pay per view," Troy observes.

Abed notes, almost immediately after Troy's point, "Both trite and true."

If they're trying to rile her up to take some massive swings at the car, it's working.

"Happy new semester to you all, as well," Annie hisses, and speed walks away from them with Shirley trailing in her wake.

"Sweetie, wait for me," Shirley calls, and Annie slows down enough to let her catch up.

"I'm not going to apologize for them," Shirley puffs. "Just wanted to ask, since I realized we've mostly been focused on school work so far this year…how was your summer?"

She plasters a non-committal smile on her face. "Busy. Busy, but good."

Truthfully, she'd spent most of the summer working her ass off in the produce department at a nearby Whole Foods (Star-Burns, of all people, had an in there), not only to make some extra cash, but also to stay the fuck out of her apartment above Dildopolis. Besides that, she and Abed and Troy hung out when their schedules allowed, often just watching movies and shows together. They'd even cajoled Jeff and Britta into participating in a couple of board game nights.

And Annie had befriended Megan, one of the bakers at the store. Someone like her. A lesbian.

They'd bumped into each other in their respective departments a handful of times during Annie's first few weeks there, since they both worked morning to early afternoon shifts, mostly, and struck up a friendship from there. Annie hadn't even had to pose any intrusive or out-of-place questions, because about a month and a half after she'd started work, Megan popped over after the end of one of her shifts to ask, "Hey, would you wanna go out and get drinks with my girlfriend and me this Sunday?"

Annie didn't set out to make lesbianism A Thing to discuss when they met up at a dive bar, but she wasn't working again til Wednesday and the gin and tonic specials got Caroline Decker liquored up in a hurry. So when Megan and her girlfriend, Danielle, learned she was single and asked if anyone in the bar had caught her attention, Annie nodded at the bartender, a stunning redhead with smoldering eyes, a quick laugh and quicker pour hand, and a figure designed to rack up loads of tips from thirsty men.

Even as her face flushed, it had felt damn good to see the looks of delight crop up on Megan and Danielle's faces before they started chanting gleefully, "One of us! One of us!" That was the first time Annie felt as if she really _belonged_ in the LGBTQ+ community.

She's still not sure how or when she'll tell the rest of the group besides Abed and Troy. Per the promise they'd made after she'd come out to them, they still treat her just about the same as they always have. With the minor exceptions of Abed recommending more films that are woman-centered, and Troy offering to wingman by vouching for her stellar cooking skills, noting, "If you get a lady eatin, she ain't leavin." Truthfully, Annie feels more comfortable and confident in her own skin now than she has maybe, well, ever.

She should've known that allowing that Patronus of a thought to register would come back to haunt her. Because almost immediately after it does, she hears a distinctive voice call, "Hey, nerds!"

She's bumped into Britta outside the study group during the course of the year already, naturally, and has played things cool. She'll happily admit that Britta's conventionally attractive—she tries to be as detached as possible in that assessment, for her own good.

But the sight of Britta Perry in ripped blue jeans (Annie can see her lean thigh muscles ripple the tiniest bit as she walks), a White Stripes t-shirt, and her classic black pleather jacket does bad things to her, even on her good days.

Plus, she's rocking Aviators and knock-off Doc Martens, blowing bubblegum, and strolling over while casually carrying a baseball bat along her shoulders, across the back of her neck, looking for all the world like a blonde Jessica Jones, or a well-adjusted but still kinda crazy sister to Harley Quinn.

So yeah, in this particular instance, Annie's willing to concede that Britta is smoking hot.

Her arrival causes Annie and Shirley to fall back in line with the group despite her annoyance with the male faction, almost as if Britta has a light, invisible grip or a gravitational pull on her.

" _If she does, it's purely in a friendly way,"_ Annie tells herself as they all make their way out onto the football field. She's accepted that Britta isn't interested in her—or maybe any girls at all. Sure, sometimes Annie's smile doesn't always reach her eyes when she greets Britta, and they don't spend as much time together outside of the group as they once did, but they're still friends, for sure.

"So, where'd you get the bat, slugger?" Jeff jokes.

"Baseball house threw a party a couple of weekends ago, like a pre-back-to-school rager," Britta answers casually after she hands her ticket over. "Hot girl privileges, you can go anywhere and take anything and no one's gonna say shit. I figured I could have some fun with it at this whole school-sanctioned vandalism thing," she adds, gesturing at the car on the field.

"We experience a lot of that here, don't we?" Shirley asks, frowning.

"At least this is outside. Can't be as bad as the paintball wars," Troy pipes up.

Abed shakes his head and looks out at the football field with a thousand yard stare. "So many paint splatters."

The dean trots over to them and claps his hands excitedly. "Ah, should've figured your little group would be here for this! Now, don't worry, we took the engine out of the car—the shop guys checked _and_ we even had Freddie, the mechanic from in town, inspect the Oldsmobile to make sure it's in proper condition for destruction.

Britta grimaces. "Doesn't he have, like, a bunch of two star reviews on Yelp?"

Dean Pelton rolls his eyes. "That's much better than one or zero star reviews, Ms. Perry. Now, if you all can just join the orderly line, please…"

Jeff, Troy, and Abed go on a testosterone-fueled rampage, busting the car up with crowbars and jumping on the roof for good measure. Shirley starts off small before graduating to massive hacks, laughing with excitement as she adds dings to the side doors, and Pierce follows suit. Britta's only regret is that she didn't think to bring spray paint for an added touch of vandalism, but she makes do with reducing a side mirror to rubble and busting out a headlight, in addition to leaving several welts along the hood of the car.

Annie's turn comes, and, naturally, she takes her time choosing her instrument of destruction, deliberating and walking around the Oldsmobile, inspecting it for weak spots.

"C'mon, hurry up!" someone in the line yells.

"Are you going to make a pros and cons list between attacking with a hammer or a crowbar?" Troy asks, half-joking, half-serious.

Annie shushes him. "I'm thinking!"

Britta thinks that's the problem, and decides to intervene, sidling up to Annie.

"Wanna use my bat? It's fun." Britta holds it out, offering it up to her, and Annie takes it, then naturally assumes her batting stance—ingrained in her through years of baseball and softball units in Phys. Ed. She swings her left arm forward like a pendulum, holds the bat up straight, and brings it back. She takes a practice swing and gives an appreciative nod, grinning at the group's collective surprise at how easy her form looks.

"Thanks, Britta," she smiles.

"No problem. Knock yourself out, Annie." She can't stop herself from adding, with a minute lift of her head, "By the way—dig the get-up. Casual looks good on you."

" _Why exactly are you noticing how Annie's dressed?"_ some part of her mind asks suspiciously.

" _Because she normally looks like a Stepford wife. This might be the first time I've ever seen her wear jeans and a t-shirt."_

That description didn't entirely do her ensemble justice—she was wearing dark blue skinny jeans, black Converse, and a black and white striped short-sleeved top. Still a tad chic, but nowhere close to the level of her usual dresses or skirt and blouse combos.

Britta says in her head without thinking, _"That's the kind of outfit I might wear. And it really does look good."_

Which doesn't have to mean anything. After all, she could totally dress like Annie if she wan—ok, no, that's a bold faced lie.

She notices a tinge of pink rise in Annie's cheeks before she answers, hesitantly, "Thanks. I—I like what you've got on, too."

Britta looks down and grins. "Felt appropriate to wear something from my crazy riot days for smashing up a car, ya know?"

This is, weirdly, the longest the two of them have conversed back and forth in a while and it feels a bit like they're having a classic rom-com moment where they're stepping around some kind of nebulous, mutual attraction.

Except there's no way Annie could ever be into her—she's too loud, too messy, too headstrong.

And Britta's hard pressed to say exactly how she feels about the brunette. She's not sure if it's attraction, really. But she can say, quite confidently, that she feels a sting in her chest when Annie greets her in the study room with a smile that doesn't quite make it to her eyes the way it used to.

She recalls, too, how she'd felt weirdly nervous to see Annie on one of those occasions over the summer when she, Abed, and Troy had roped her and Jeff into a board game night. Maybe it was just because she was having a brief, semi-pot-addled fling with Annabel at the time. A lovely lady she'd met at the mall, of all places. Who meets a woman you end up making out with at the _mall_ in this day and age?

It wasn't as if she'd woken up one day and suddenly realized she wanted to find a woman to kiss. No, it was the result of the whole idiotic Page incident. Britta had initially joked to herself that she needed to find a woman to share an actual good kiss with to cancel out the messy Valentine's Day debacle. She wasn't at all serious; it was just a funny little thought that had wriggled its way into her brain. The more she considered it, though, the more that idea expanded.

So during the summer, she'd chased that thought down a rabbit hole, which included a ton of internet searches about bisexuality, complemented by some extensive and intensely personal field research. Call it Introduction to Advanced Female Affection, which had led to her kissing Annabel. And Kerri. And Christine.

Understandably, Britta had been a touch concerned about accidentally mixing up Annabel and Annie's names at board game night—only because she and Jeff had brought booze, of course, she's not _that_ bad of a person or friend that she'd screw them up on purpose.

As Britta flicks back through her memories, trying to uncover other potential causes for concern on that night, she remembered specifically telling Annie that she'd looked great in a pink sundress that accentuated her surprisingly deep tan. It wasn't just the clothes or the summer complexion that made her glow, either, but how Annie had laughed loudly and often, an easy smile resting on her face for most of the night. Maybe it was the lack of school-related stress, but Britta thought it might have been something else, too, because Annie seemed incredibly relaxed, or content, even, in her own skin for once.

Just as she had that night, Britta watches Annie closely now—maybe a bit too closely to be considered entirely friendly, but everyone else is too invested in tracking the progress made toward totaling the Oldsmobile to notice.

So she's free to admire the torque Annie gets as she hitches up her front leg with a kick and follows it with explosive hip rotation, free to watch her shirt ride up above her waist for a half-second as she completes her first swing.

Britta watches Annie heft the bat again in both hands, swears she can see her jaw twitch for a second before it sets, can see her bright blue eyes darken before she takes another clean, hard swing. There's something beautiful in Annie's violence, in the taut, rope-like muscles in her arms as she loads up for another cut, in her breathing—a bit ragged from exertion, but still pretty well-controlled—and especially in her _smirk_ , in the satisfaction she gleans from adding to the spider-web-like constellation of cracks in the car's back window, and that's the exact moment Britta realizes her feelings might run deeper than she wants to admit. Annie's got an easy excuse for why her cheeks are flushed pink. Britta doesn't.

Because she's out here practically soliloquizing about the mental and physical virtues of a woman—okay, not just any woman, it's Annie fucking Edison—participating in a car-smashing fundraiser.

She tries not to contemplate the last time she thought about a girl like this—when she and Annabel had sunk into their first extended makeout session and she realized she was definitely comfortable calling herself bi—because if there's one thing Britta always manages to do to objects of her affection, it's hurt them, and she refuses to make Annie suffer for her. She'll tide herself over with these small, unobtrusive moments, these little observations.

" _They're all I deserve, anyway,"_ Britta sighs to herself.

That's why, when Annie brings the bat back after her turn ends, Britta makes sure to position her left hand in the exact spot where Annie's was, toward the bottom of it, as she slings it back over her shoulders.

**

Britta's not sure who proposed they go get ice cream after they've all taken their swings at the car and watched enough of it get destroyed to feel satisfied for paying $5 each, but regardless, they end up carpooling in two vehicles to the nearest Dairy Queen since it's only about a twelve minute drive away from campus.

Annie snags the gang a booth after getting her favorite mint chocolate chip in a waffle cone, and Britta slides a table over so there's enough room for everyone after she savors her first slurp of cake batter ice cream. It's definitely not fair-trade, but a girl needs a sugar fix once in a while.

Abed comes over from the counter, his brow furrowing as he approaches the pair of them.

"What's the matter? Did they mess up your order?" Annie asks, shivering as she takes a lick of her treat.

"No…I was curious if we could recreate the study table arrangement, but the wall there prevents enough open space," he comments. "We may as well sit in different spots, then. Different location, different dynamic."

"But you and Troy are still sitting next to each other," Britta points out as they settle into two chairs.

"On opposite sides from usual. We don't need too much change," Troy responds.

Annie had already slid into the booth when Britta spotted Pierce coming over. Guessing he'd take the currently vacant "Winger" spot at the head of the table, she squeezed in next to Annie.

"Sorry," she murmurs. "You still have enough room?"

"Ye-yeah," Annie nods, her affirmation cleaved in half by another violent shiver.

Britta frowns as Jeff and Shirley make their way over to the rest of the group. "You've got goosebumps running all up and down your arms. Do you wanna take my jacket?"

"No," Annie answers, a bit too quickly, a touch too loudly, causing everyone to stare. "I mean," she goes on, "I don't want to worry about accidentally getting ice cream on it."

Britta snorts at that. "It would hardly be the worst stain I've gotten on this thing. Go on," she insists, bringing her arms in close to herself to remove her jacket without hitting Shirley, "you're clearly freezing."

"Ok," Annie agrees, still a hair hesitant, for whatever reason, but she accepts the jacket anyway.

Britta hadn't considered the gesture that big of a deal, at all. Her friend's turning into a popsicle in front of her, she's fine, it's whatever. But she hadn't anticipated that Annie would be able to pull it off as a look.

" _Are you really so vain that you're thinking Annie only looks good because her outfit today vaguely resembles stuff that you'd wear?"_

Britta groans inwardly at herself; she's trying to get better at the whole "think positively" schtick, but her brain's usually more than happy to relapse into snide comments and self-loathing.

" _No, I'm not that vain,"_ she argues with herself. _"Annie's always pretty with her kinda preppy ensembles. I'm just noticing her more today because she's rocking a different style."_

" _Wait, wait, hold up. Did you just say she's always pretty?"_

" _Yeah. I mean, she is. That's not really up for debate."_

"Hey, Britta?"

Annie's voice snaps her out of the unexpected and, if she's being honest, terrifying conversation playing in her head.

"Yeah?" she answers after a beat.

"You—you've got some ice cream on the edge of your mouth," Annie repeats, passing her a napkin.

"Thanks," she mutters, wiping blindly before crumpling up the napkin.

She feels Annie shift next to her again.

"What?"

"Oth—other side. Here, I got it." Annie gently tugs the crumpled-up napkin from her grasp, turns toward her, and carefully dabs the ice cream off before giving a satisfied nod. "There you go."

Britta's earlier sense that maybe, just maybe, she'd entered a rom-com timeline grows even stronger at the gesture.

"Thank you," she nods again at Annie, trying to focus her gaze back on her own cake batter ice cream, but that goes out the window as Annie raises her cone to her lips and Britta is _not_ doing this. She's not entertaining thoughts of sharing a frigid, chaste, mint-flavored kiss with Annie.

Britta's definitely not imagining the gasp of surprise Annie might give after she puts her Introduction to Advanced Female Affection lessons to good use and kisses her deep, uses her tongue to swipe some mint chocolate chip ice cream right out of her mouth.

Except she totally is.

It's her turn to shiver, now.


	5. Annie/Britta

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set shortly after S3E11 when Annie moves in with the boys. Sticking roughly with how I perceive Season 1/early Season 2 Britta to be written before she got warped into a caricature of herself.

It takes Annie more than a little time to adjust to living full-time with Troy and Abed, though she happily trades out the blaring neon and the constantly screeching P.A. system of Dildopolis for hijinks, unpredictability, and many, many movie nights. She learns to relent when the boys go a little off-script during their weekly grocery trips and embraces one mystery dinner per weekend. And while the apartment space aside from her room is never quite as tidy as she'd like it to be, Abed and Troy take to her shared cleaning schedule quickly. They slowly start building up their cooking skills, too, helping to prep sides and even making main dishes themselves here and there, with feedback and help from Annie.

Living with the two of them draws out a playful side of her, one she wasn't really sure could exist outside of designated "fun" times like pep rallies, Halloween parties (of the non-zombie variety), or epic Wild West fights. She learns that it's okay to have strawberries and s'mores for dinner once in a while, that staying up until 1 AM to dissect old _X-Files_ episodes is sometimes worth not getting her doctor-recommended eight hours of sleep. Annie's spent so long running away from her high school past, trying to block out anything that could possibly dredge up unwanted memories of "Little Annie Adderall," that she didn't realize she'd missed out on tons of harmlessly dumb teen adventures while she was sequestered away in her room or in the library. She's glad to realize that growing up, getting older, doesn't have to wear her down like the nubby tips of so many number two pencils she's used on Scantron tests over the years.

She's also glad that Britta's started coming over semi-regularly for dinner with the three of them.

It had started innocently enough, with Troy inviting her over one Friday when she'd complained about not really having any groceries at her place.

"That's not our problem," Annie had been about to say, because, well, it's not, but she'd held her tongue because Troy's offer was generous, and she was trying to get better about going with the flow.

On the other hand…

"Our apartment guidelines do mention we should provide each other at least twelve hours' advance notice for prepping for dinner guests," Annie had reminded Troy and Abed as they were leaving campus.

Troy had brightened up at that, oddly. "Hey, you finally called them guidelines, not rules. There's some progress! And I hardly think Britta counts as a guest," he'd continued. "In terms of expectations for atmosphere and whatnot."

"Besides, today's pizza Friday, so we can just order more," Abed had chimed in.

The four of them ended up having a fun night together—a better time than Annie had expected, honestly—and, soon after, Friday night dinners with Britta became a regular occurrence, every two or three weeks, depending on their collective schedules.

It's almost like a cultural event, at times, with Abed and Troy taking the lead on television, pop culture, and video games, Annie providing them with literature samplings—they've all taken well to the class drama and social trappings of _The Age of Innocence_ —and Britta introducing them to some well-worn favorites from her extensive CD collection; she's gotten Annie on a Liz Phair kick recently.

The way they've formed a sort of secondary unit, outside of the confines of campus and the study group, warms Annie's heart more than she'd expected, and she's come to look forward to Fridays with Britta and the boys, as she calls their dinner soirees.

Or, at least, she usually does. On normal days, or what pass as normal days, for herself and her roommates.

This isn't one of them.

"Why would you have tacos on a Thursday? It's Taco Tuesday, not Taco Thursday!" Abed explains to Troy, again, his syllables growing more and more clipped.

"Abed. Chipotle was calling to me last night and I could not, would not, deny that call!" Troy answers with equal exasperation. "Hence why I'd prefer that we have the fresh berry and cucumber salad tonight."

"That does sound good. But I'd still also like tacos," Abed answers.

"Listen, we will find a way to compromise," Annie promises through semi-clenched teeth, in a tone that's a touch more threatening than unifying. Better that than becoming the mother figure and screaming that they'll have what she makes for dinner and like it, though.

"Just give me a minute," she says. "No, wait, five minutes," she corrects herself, knowing Abed's penchant for taking those types of remarks literally.

Annie's not always the best mediator—her stubbornness can get the best of her from time to time—and Jeff's unlikely to solve this particular food impasse, or care all that much about it. She texts Britta instead.

_Dinner drama here. How do I get a compromise between a fresh berry and cucumber salad (Troy's pick, as we'd all discussed earlier this week) and tacos (which Abed now wants). Help if you can, please._

It's a long shot, but Annie doesn't see a clear way to skirt this disagreement, and Britta's response only confuses her further.

_Mexican potatoes._

Annie gives a muted, frustrated groan and texts back, _What?_

Her phone buzzes with an incoming call from Britta a few minutes later. "Hello?" Annie picks up, still a bit confused over Britta's last text.

"Hey," Britta says quickly. "Mexican potatoes, explained. You got stuff for tacos? Shredded cheese, salsa, sour cream? And, of course, potatoes?"

Annie checks the fridge. "Yes to the taco ingredients, but we're a bit low on cheese. No potatoes to speak of, either."

"Alright, cool. I'll stop by the store and get the potatoes and cheese before I come over. You bake 'em and then top 'em with taco fixings, it's a nice little way to spice up baked potatoes," Britta assures her. "We can have them on the side with the salad so the boys both get something they want, and then we're not all gorging ourselves on popcorn or junk food later on in the evening. That should work, right?"

"Yeah. Yeah, definitely," Annie replies after a beat. "That's a really good idea, Britta."

"I know. Those do hit me from time to time," she answers, and Annie can hear the smile in her voice. "I'll be over a little bit earlier than usual, probably around 5, and I can help get dinner started since potatoes always take a while to bake."

"Oh, okay. Are you sure?" Annie frowns. "I wouldn't wanna inconvenience you."

"I'd be happy to, really," Britta insists, and Annie's not going to turn the act of kindness down, especially not when it gives her a bit of extra time to get started on homework in the late afternoon rather than going on a small grocery run.

"Cool, thank you! Alright, then, we'll see you around 5," Annie responds before ending the call.

**

True to her word, Britta rolls up to Annie, Abed, and Troy's shared apartment a few minutes after 5 with her reusable cloth grocery bag slung over her shoulder and a six pack of Blue Moon clutched tightly in her left hand.

Annie greets her with a warm smile. "Thanks again for helping with dinner, Britta."

"Don't mention it, babe," Britta answers briskly as she presses the six pack into Annie's arms. "If you could put the brews in the fridge, that would be great, and I'll get these potatoes prepped to go in the oven." She slides the bag off her shoulder onto the perpetually overcrowded kitchen island, retrieves a paper plate from the small cabinet next to the sink, and pops the potatoes onto it before grabbing a fork from the cutlery drawer. She neatly stabs near-identical dots into the top of each spud when she feels Annie practically staring through her.

Annie's not sure what's more surprising or more attractive to her: Britta calling her "babe" out of nowhere or being comfortable enough in what Annie's come to think of as "her" kitchen to know where damn near everything is without asking.

Annie takes an awkward side step toward the fridge— _"great job drawing attention to the fact that you were frozen in place and gawking at her,"_ she mutters to herself—before clearing her throat to say, "You…if you wrap the potatoes in damp paper towels and then microwave them, it helps them bake faster."

Britta shoots her a small smile and follows Annie's instructions. "Good to know."

Annie's typically not much of a drinker outside of parties or going out to bars, but her awkwardness drives her back to the fridge and she grabs a beer, taking a deep swig as Britta slides the potato plate into the microwave and sets it for five minutes.

"So, Abed and Troy actually disagreed about something?" Britta jokes.

Annie nods. "A rarity, but it does happen. They both thought this dinner idea sounds good, though."

Britta shakes her head ruefully and follows Annie's cue, cracking open a Blue Moon of her own. "How'd they survive before you moved in?"

Annie shrugs. "Cereal and the cafeteria, I guess."

"Well, if I may say so, you're good for them. You're all good for each other. This place is…nice. It's homier, with you here," Britta says quietly.

"Thanks," Annie murmurs softly, hesitating for a second before adding, "We've enjoyed having you around more. I've liked it. There's only so much comic book and film talk I can handle in a day."

Watching Britta's eyes dart to the floor and seeing a small smile break out on her face shouldn't be all it takes to resuscitate some of Annie's old feelings for the blonde. But it is. And she should probably be concerned about that. But she isn't.

The question she wants to ask— _"why'd you call me 'babe' just now, Britta?"—_ hangs on the curve of her lips, but it drops back into her beer bottle as Abed and Troy come into the kitchen to say hello to Britta. Annie drinks her curiosity and swallows it down just before the microwave beeps.

"Ok, so, as I mentioned earlier, we're having Mexican potatoes as a side dish," Annie announces. "Those are still gonna take a while to bake, but if you two could help us with getting the salads together later by chopping up some of the fruits and vegetables, that would be awesome," Annie tells them.

"Sure," Abed and Troy answer together, their earlier quarrel seemingly behind them.

Britta gives both of them an appreciative nod. "Right answer. I'm totally here for deconstructing gender roles in the kitchen and subverting the patriarchal idea that domestic work is inherently feminine and, also, not to be valued as 'work' at all. Plus," she goes on as she and Annie start wrapping the potatoes in aluminum foil before placing them on the top rack of the oven, "it's so freeing, to not feel beholden to a takeout menu, speaking as someone who lived that life for way too long. And it can be really attractive to a potential partner."

"Are you looking for a partner, then?" Abed inquires in his usual, to-the-point tone.

Annie swears Britta's eyes widen and her cheeks flush pink before she downs some more of her Blue Moon.

"No, no, I'm just speaking hypothetically," she answers, but there's a tremor of uncertainty in her voice.

" _Britta_ _is_ _ridiculously attractive,"_ Annie reminds herself. _"There's probably some new guy in her life or a hookup buddy or whatever, so don't even let yourself think about her that way."_

It doesn't help matters when they all prep their dinners together, with Britta's indie mix—ranging from Dr. Dog and The Shins to Foster the People and MGMT—providing a lovely aural background to a surprisingly balmy, early November evening. It's the perfect backdrop for the light clatter of knives slicing through strawberries and cucumbers, of Troy and Abed dropping shredded cheese into their baked potatoes from ever more ridiculous heights, of Britta giving a delightful hum at the delicious taste of sweet blueberries, of Annie's little found family slowly but surely expanding from three members to four.

"So, the Mexican baked potatoes were a good idea, then?" Britta asks, a tad hesitantly, after everyone's had a few minutes to try everything.

"Doper than picking up a blue shell on the last lap of Mario Kart," Troy comments. Abed reaches across the table to fist bump Britta and adds, "Definitely a contender for our regular meal rotations."

Annie nods in agreement. "I totally agree. Easy to make and absolutely delicious. Great call, Britta."

Britta can feel herself smiling like a doofus at all of their compliments, but something about receiving praise from Annie, who has a bit more expertise in the kitchen, makes her grin extra wide, and she answers happily, with her palm out, "You're damn right it was. Gimme some fivesies!"

Annie puts down her fork, slaps her hand, and joins Britta in her infamous high five/snake combo dance.

"Look at you go, Annie, we got a double snake in the house! Python on the loose," Britta exclaims before lamenting, as Abed and Troy chuckle good-naturedly at the two of them, "God, when did I get so _lame?_ "

She says it with a grin and a laugh of her own, though, even though this isn't how she pictured her early thirties at all. After all, she's supping with a neurotic, compassionate, studious, stubborn, and stunningly beautiful co-ed who makes her consider risks she absolutely shouldn't take (but then, those are the ones that Britta always yearns for the most). Sitting across from said co-ed's two nerdy but wonderful roommates in a college apartment that screams transience rather than some hip loft or a dive bar that's on the precipice of becoming too trendy for her to frequent much longer. Those are the types of places she'd figured would be regular fixtures in her life by now.

Britta's never been one for road maps or long-term plans, but she would've assumed she'd veered massively off course to end up at Greendale Community College. She's gotten lost—directionally, in guys, in booze, in weed, in music, in dubious causes, et cetera—so many times that she's entirely lost track of some of the more mundane incidents. But the feeling sticks with her, sewn tight across her ribcage and stapled in place, for good measure. The feeling of flying blind, chugging Red Bull in a 2003 Toyota Camry that's on its last legs with the music cranked loud enough to block out the fear and adrenaline that comes with accelerating too fast.

But now, when Britta looks at Annie to drink in her smile and then glances at Troy and Abed, too, she realizes that the sensations of feeling lost and getting found? They're not so different.

** 

The four of them have a pretty standard night together, discussing music, books, and movies for a while before the subject of video games is broached. Normally, Britta doesn't care for them that much—she'll play rounds of Mario Kart or Super Smash Brothers here or there, even though she's an average player at best, and will only take ass-kickings in Mario Party if she's sufficiently stoned—but she perks up when she sees Annie, not Troy or Abed, dusting off the Xbox 360.

"Do you two mind if I play Dishonored for a bit?" she asks her roommates hopefully.

They both say yes and give her almost proud smiles, like dads do when their teenage sons ask if they want to toss a football around, Britta guesses, and the oddly familial scene makes her smile. She's not sure exactly how to describe the three of them and their unique bond, but they all bring each other degrees of happiness, in their own ways.

Right now, though, they separate. Due to the controller's limited cord length, Annie ends up settling on the smaller couch next to Britta, rather than the larger one that has room for herself and the boys.

Britta doesn't care about the game, at first. But Troy and Abed take her disinterest as almost a personal affront and grab her attention by painting a tangled narrative of revenge, ethics, morality, and class conflict.

"But the main character doesn't talk at all?" she asks the room at large as Annie starts working her way through her latest save point.

"Nope." Annie shakes her head.

"Dishonored lets you really imprint yourself on the game, since you know very little about Corvo Attano, the protagonist, outside of the introduction when you learn he's the Empress' personal bodyguard," Abed explains. "So you're dictating his character."

"You learn more about his surroundings as you interact with people and the environment at large, but, like Abed said, your choices really influence how others view you and what you represent in the city," Troy adds as Annie sneaks up on a guard, chokes him out from behind, tosses his body in a trash bin, and then scales a few boxes before…

"Did you just, like, teleport?" Britta asks quickly, leaning back into a more relaxed, disaffected pose when she realizes just how _interested_ she sounds in the mechanics. She's invested in a video game that she's not even playing.

Annie's answer—a simple "Yes, it's called a Blink in this game. Corvo got magic powers, it's a long story"—doesn't reveal much. But then she cocks her head sideways at Britta, as if to say, _"Yes, I know your secret."_

Britta will admit, the game's premise sounds intriguing and the colorful artwork—steampunk meets the Industrial Revolution and old world excess—dazzles her, especially because she's more used to seeing her friends play older Mario games rather than new offerings. And the well-designed settings underscore the social class divisions that Troy had mentioned.

But what intrigues Britta the most is watching Annie play, studying how her hands are in perpetual motion, operating between a blend of smooth touches and quick-trigger precision. It seems like the character, Corvo, never just walks. Annie manipulates the controller flawlessly, making him crouch and creep through danger in some spots, then getting him to glide gracefully along rooftops and exposed sewer pipes in others, with liberal and effective use of blink interspersed throughout his travels.

She hears Abed mention to Troy at one point, "It's like when she's Catwoman," and, more to keep her brain from getting lost in dangerous daydreamy territory than anything else, Britta pipes up, "When has Annie ever been Catwoman? Like, for Halloween?"

All the air goes out of the room at her question. Annie's pulling a mana potion up in her inventory when she freezes and gasps, and Troy shoots Abed a thinly veiled look of irritation.

Sensing that the best thing to do here might be to back away, Britta comments, "Wait a minute," as she more closely inspects the powers and resources Annie's collected over the course of her gameplay, trying to wallpaper over the sense that she just accidentally invaded something private. "That blink thing is basically a mini-teleport, and you can freeze time and possess enemies. Plus, you've got a"—she squints at the screen—"spring razor, which looks like a shrapnel grenade, and a bunch of crossbow bolts. Why haven't you haven't rounded up some group of dumbass guards for a merciless slaughter yet, Annie?"

"Because I don't want to," Annie answers defensively, and just like that, the group's standard equilibrium is restored. "I like playing as more of a stealthy, sneaky assassin who goes unnoticed and ghosts through levels. Plus, the narrative and atmosphere gets even darker if you kill too many people, so I don't want to risk it."

Britta snorts. "How many people have you murdered so far? I bet you can take out a few guards and it'll be fine."

"S-so many! Tons! I'm totally on the edge of going bad in Dishonored," she insists, her voice sliding up in pitch at the end of her warning.

Britta can't resist rolling her eyes at that. Annie's never been a particularly good liar, so Britta turns to face her roommates, staring down Abed and Troy to see if they'll corroborate her non-existent story. "Lemme guess. She's committed, like, five murders, right? And she's already pretty far along in the game, you said," she argues.

Troy wilts under Britta's gaze first. "Maybe seven, tops?"

Annie glares at him and mutters "traitor" under her breath as she inches Corvo toward an open window, glancing around the level for some clandestine higher ground to reduce the chances of being spotted by a cluster of four guards inside.

"C'mon, you're telling me it wouldn't be fun to splatter their virtual blood and bones everywhere?" Britta wheedles. "Could you at least do it for the audience members who are tired of watching you just slink around, avoiding conflict at all costs?" She can't say for sure why she's doing this—she likes how Annie plays this game, really, being sly and unobtrusive. But Britta's always been a natural-born troublemaker. And if she's going to bother paying attention to a video game, she wants to see _some_ action, at least.

Annie huffs and rolls her eyes. "Fine. Just this once so you'll stop bothering me about it." But she doesn't sound all that perturbed; in fact, judging by how she bites the corner of her lower lip and gives a little smirk before she leaps into action, Britta would say Annie _enjoyed_ the challenge and their little back-and-forth.

She goes into her inventory, flicking around items for a couple of beats before she selects an empty whiskey bottle to throw. Annie takes a breath and holds it for a second, then tosses it through the open window, toward the huddled crowd of enemies, and blinks in after it before quickly selecting Corvo's Freeze Time power. It makes the screen go black and white, turning enemies into statues as an eerie, dismembered voice whispers ancient incantations.

"Cool, cool, cool," Abed murmurs appreciatively, and though she's hardly a video game connoisseur, Britta can't help but agree with him. She admires how well the game captures the looks of surprise on the guards' faces, how some of them are caught reaching halfway for pistols and swords while others are ducking from the projectile.

Annie equips a spring razor and attaches it to the bottom of the bottle, which is in the middle of a flip and might just smack one of the guards in the face when she unfreezes time. She quickly scurries out of the room and ducks for cover on the landing, but keeps the camera trained on the scene inside the building.

Britta swears that Annie makes a Joker reference by whispering, "And here. we. go," in a rough, throaty voice that thrills her more than it should just before she stops using the freeze time power.

The onslaught's volcanic, immediate, and Britta loves it.

Shrapnel bursts forth from the spring razor, erupting into two guards' guts and blowing them apart, instantly making a massive mess of intestines on the floor. One avoids the worst of the spring razor's attack, but the broken glass from the bottle slashes his throat to ribbons. The fourth has his left arm and his right leg blasted clean off, leaving him to collapse, face-first, into his fellow guards' innards.

The cacophony of noise draws one last guard into the room. He stops dead, nearly trembling at the carnage. Annie takes advantage of his stunned state to decapitate him with a well-aimed crossbow bolt.

She turns back to Britta with a smug look. "Was that enough action for you?"

For once, she doesn't have anything to say.

After a second, Abed turns to Annie and gives a deep nod of satisfaction. " _Brutal_ killing spree _,_ " he notes reverently.

Troy, for his part, glances back and forth between Annie and the grisly scene in the game multiple times as if he's playing ping-pong, stuttering incoherently for a second before saying, with a look that lands halfway between exasperation and awe, "Ok, first of all, yeah, that was sick. Simple, but still creative, and well-executed. Second, what the hell?" he asks, his voice rising with both frustration and excitement. "We've been trying to get you to do that kind of cool shit for ages and you always tell us no!"

Annie gives one of her shy smiles, full of false modesty. "It was fun to lose control and take out some aggression for once, I guess, as a little break from how I usually play Dishonored."

Britta knows Annie better than that, knows that she probably wants to lose control in the game more often. She can see the glint in her eye, the one that appears during paintball or any competition, really. It's starting to fade out now as Annie reverts back to her standard play-style. It should be unnerving, how easily she can flip that switch within herself, but if anything, Britta admires it.

Britta doesn't know what possesses her to comment, "Guess I'm a better bad influence on Annie than you two, then," with a smirk. Doesn't know why the words come out so sensually (because she's definitely _not_ flirting). Doesn't know why she brushes her shoulder against Annie's as she gives an exaggerated shrug.

That's what she tells herself, anyway, for plausible deniability.

** 

Annie saves her game shortly after that, not wanting to completely monopolize their evening with her single-player game, and they all end up watching a couple of Seinfeld reruns. It's a few minutes after 11 when Abed and Troy announce they're both going to call it a night and the three of them join together for what is now their standard pre-bedtime group hug.

Normally, Annie would follow suit, but…oh, fuck it, she doesn't want Britta to leave yet.

So she's pouring them the world's weakest cherry lemonade and vodkas to keep her around. Annie knows the blonde is almost never one to turn down a mixed drink, but she wants to stay totally sober, or close to it. She never wants her sight to go blurry when she's gazing at Britta, even in the dim, mismatched lighting of the messy living room.

"Thanks," Britta murmurs as Annie brings over her beverage, and if she's displeased with the minimal kick of alcohol, she doesn't show it. She takes a sip and then says slowly, "You're…you're really good at that game. At Dishonored."

"Thanks," Annie parrots her, appreciative that Britta even remembered the title. She expects that'll be all when Britta adds, almost talking into the glass, "I liked watching you play. It was really elegant." She puts down her drink and mimics using an Xbox controller so badly that Annie nearly chokes on her cherry lemonade. "How d'you do it?"

After coughing, Annie replies, "How do I do what?"

"Control your character so well," Britta answers. "You have little elf paws, Edison. I don't get how you press all the buttons and stuff."

Annie gives a huff of indignation. "I do _not_ have little elf paws!"

Britta's grin is unfocused, mostly because she's tired, but she fixates on Annie's pout. "Yeah, you do. C'mon, c'mere, lemme see 'em." She pats the cushion next to her and Annie scoots closer. Britta takes her hands in her own, grinning down shyly. "I told you," she insists. "I'm only, what, like an inch or two taller than you, but your hands are so tiny compared to mine!"

Annie's about to retort that maybe Britta just has big man hands when her brain plants a massive stop sign in front of the idea. Because it hits her that Britta Perry's flirting with her, using possibly the oldest, lamest, most outrageously obvious trick in the book. But she's flirting with her, nonetheless. And Annie will not fuck this up.

So she asks, with all the nonchalant charm she can muster, "Hey, I'm just curious—why'd you call me 'babe' earlier when you came in with the groceries?"

Britta takes one hand away from Annie's to grab her drink. She takes a gulp, coughs, and answers, "I could say that it was to co-opt a cat-call into a womanly term of endearment. But that was like, 3 percent of why I did it."

Annie prompts her, almost praying that she's not going to look like an idiot. "And the other 97 percent?"

Britta puts her glass back down, gathers both of Annie's hands up again, and sighs. "The other 97 percent is that I like you. A lot."

Annie's on the verge of answering, but Britta keeps talking, because she's Britta, and she feels like her affection should always come with a disclaimer, or eight, so she goes on, "And I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for putting you in this weird position. I mean, fuck," she sighs again and the sound rips through Annie like a hurricane, "I don't even know if you're into girls, Annie. And I'm a bad influence, and a shitty role model."

For once, Annie's stubbornness is an asset, clearing her mind in pursuit of her goal. "First of all," she murmurs, weaving her hands into Britta's hair, "I'm majorly into girls. More specifically, you."

She dips her head toward Britta's, keeping steady eye contact—of all the times for debate to come in handy—as she says, layering her voice as herself, not Caroline Decker, "Second, how about I get to decide if you're a bad influence. Can I…?"

She lets the unspoken question hang in the narrow space between them, hoping Britta knows what it is and thinking stupidly that asking it as a fragment will dull some of the pain when she says no.

Britta whispers, _"Please_ , Annie, _"_ and Annie's brain, for once, is blissfully empty as she closes the distance between their lips. And good God, does she ever owe the universe big time for getting to discover the gift of Britta Perry's kiss, tart and sweet from the cherry lemonade and insistent and relaxed all at once.

For Annie, it's not like any kiss she's ever gotten in college. Vaughn's kisses were sweet, but they were empty calories. Kissing Jeff felt like starring on the front cover of her old, treasured romance novels, like yielding to an inevitability and, rather than discovering bliss and contentment, finding that you were crushed under its weight.

Britta's kisses start off soft, gentle, and just the tiny bit hesitant. There's no swell of string music, no exploding fireworks. Just them. It feels right. And as Britta has one hand cupped on her cheek and the other running through her hair, Annie whispers to herself, _"I could stay like this for ages."_

Britta's happy to oblige. For the first time in a long time, she's with someone who isn't just kissing her for fun or as a precursor to getting in her pants. She feels wanted in a way that says, _"I've been looking for you, Britta Perry_ ," not _"I've been looking to get laid and any woman with a pulse will do."_

She blinks her eyes open as she pulls back from Annie for a second, taking the sight of her in, and it's really not fair that a woman who'd gotten changed into pajamas an hour ago can still steal her breath. She's always tried so hard not to stare, but she thinks she's earned the right now. Annie's sparkling blue eyes hold a tint of glossy lust and her lips are stained red from the lemonade, swollen from their kisses, and Britta can't keep herself from angling her head, batting her eyelashes, baiting Annie into parting those lips a bit more. She finally, _finally_ , gets to fulfill that little fantasy she had back when they'd gotten ice cream at Dairy Queen and swipes her tongue into Annie's mouth. Annie breathes out, _"Britta_ ," as they break apart, her chest heaving. She's staring through Britta like she wants to set her on fire with the heat of her gaze, and that's the exact moment Britta Perry knows she's fully, wonderfully doomed to keep falling for Annie Edison.

Annie's not sure how exactly it happens, if Britta pulls her down or if she pushes her back, but either way, they end up horizontal on the couch and Annie's reward for biting and sucking on Britta's lower lip is to get a close-up of her eyes rolling back in her head, to hear Britta moan her name into her ear. Annie later refers to these phenomena as exhibits A and B for providing ironclad, incontrovertible proof that she is absolutely, undoubtedly, a lesbian.

She eventually sits up as their kisses turn soft, lazy, easy, reluctantly letting Britta up because it's late and as much as she wants Britta to stay the night with her, it's definitely too soon and she doesn't want to seem clingy.

But the way Britta smiles at her makes her light up, and she says hesitantly, "You know…I think I told you this at the Valentine's Day dance last year, but you're not a bad role model at all. I mean, you're honest, you stand up for your ideals more than the average person. Having ideals, at all, in today's world is pretty rare."

Britta's smile flashes even brighter at that. "Thanks, Annie. I'm...I'm trying to get better at the whole liking and loving myself deal. It's hard, but…" she gives Annie's hand a squeeze. "I've got some good reasons to try."

The question slips out before Annie can catch it. "Are you saying you want _this_ ," she gestures between the two of them, "to go somewhere?"

" _A great question to ask someone who's terminally afraid of commitment after all of one makeout sesh, Annie,"_ she berates herself.

"I…uh…" Britta gives her head a shake and takes a deep breath. "Honestly?"

The moment stretches and Annie's prepared to feel her heart sink into it.

Britta continues, her voice a little shaky, "Yeah. I do. I'm not exactly sure how that works, or what it will look like, but the idea of being with someone who, ya know, actually likes me instead of getting with someone that makes me hate myself even more sounds pretty good?" Annie answers her half-question with a breathy laugh of relief.

"I don't want this to just be a one-time thing," Britta clarifies, falters for a second, and then asks, "Do _you_ want this to go somewhere?"

Annie nods quickly, feeling a bit like a bobblehead, and murmurs, as she leans back into Britta for another kiss, "Fuck yeah, I do."

It's the best sounding curse Britta's ever heard as she and Annie sink into one more kiss before she finally gets off the couch and remembers the other thing she wanted to ask.

"Hey, when you said you're majorly into girls..." she prompts Annie as she heads for the door. "Do you mind sharing exactly what that means?"

Annie nods proudly. "Sure. I'm a lesbian. And you're the first woman I've kissed and it was pretty great, if I do say so myself."

Britta pulls her into a tight hug. "Thank you for sharing that with me, Annie. I'm so glad you felt comfortable enough to do it. And comfortable enough to kiss me senseless," Britta grins as she brushes her messy hair back. Annie's looking at her with a hint of a smirk, trying to put it away the way she does when she's repressing some sass, so Britta asks, "Penny for your thoughts?"

"Even if they're petty?"

Britta's grin grows bigger. "Do you know me? _Especially_ if they're petty."

Annie blurts out, "You're a way better kisser than Jeff," before slapping her hands over her mouth.

"First of all, it's not a competition, but I'm glad to hear that," Britta answers between laughs as she trots down the front steps. "And you are, too."

Annie slips a pair of sneakers on and follows her out. She doesn't know protocol for this situation, exactly, having exactly zero prior experience with kissing women, but she wants to see Britta off.

"Oh, and full disclosure, since you shared…I'm bi," Britta tells her as they walk toward her car, parked a little ways down the street.

"Aww, Britta, thank you for trusting me with that," Annie smiles.

"Well, since I'm now saying _bye_ to any other guy or gal who may be interested in me, I figured I should tell you," Britta winks.

Annie groans at the terrible joke as Britta gets into her car, her driver side door still open. "I cannot believe I'm gonna go on a date with such a _dork_ in the near future."

"Oh, please," Britta scoffs, but her chest warms at the comment. "Even if I'm a dork, I'm still a catch. You're _so_ totally gonna fantasize about me the next time you masturbate."

Annie freezes and turns beet red at the comment, and Britta berates herself for a second, her doubts swirling around her mind, muttering, _"You're too crass, too broken, you're gonna wreck whatever this is before it even starts…"_

But then Annie's pulling her into a gentle kiss, out of her head, and she whispers, "I kinda wanna get some more explicit material between us before I do that."

Britta feels her jaw drop because she should really know by now that Annie's always full of surprises. She closes the door, finally, but rolls the window down to say, "Night, Annie."

"Night, Britta. Drive safe, text me when you get home."

They share one last kiss, and for Britta, kisses are nearly always grounded in the present. But she tastes something like the future, a promise of more affection, more laughs, more book talks, more everything, on Annie's lips, and she thinks Annie knows it, too, as she gives a little wave in her rearview mirror.

** 

Annie walks the short distance back to the apartment, gathers up the little remaining evidence of her and Britta's late night, of the prelude to their first kiss, and washes out the glasses when Troy stumbles into the kitchen for some water.

"Annie?" he mumbles. "Whatcha still doing up?"

"Oh, Britta just left," she answers as she deposits the cups into the dishwasher. "We had some cherry lemonade mixers. Or, well, mostly cherry lemonade."

Troy frowns. "Did you try to eat the lemonade mix? You've got red stuff all over…" he gestures in the general direction of her lips and Annie hopes she's not blushing too furiously. Troy doesn't seem to notice anything amiss as he takes a long drink of water.

"Oh!" Annie gasps as she realizes what else had seemed a bit odd about his appearance. He's wearing one of Abed's hoodies.

"Sup?" Troy asks as they turn out the lights in the kitchen and the living room.

"N-nothing," she mutters, trying to hide the small smile. She knows all about secret affection; if anything's happening between her two best friends, she'll let them share it with her in their own time.

She checks her phone when it buzzes a bit after midnight.

Britta: _At home, safe and sound. Thanks for an amazing night, Annie._

She grins and replies, _Any time! Within reason and with some prior planning, of course._

For once, Annie's not overthinking every moment, every conversation, every reaction between her and the (successfully pursued) object of her affection. She lets memories of the night, of Britta, wash over her and guide her gently to sleep.


End file.
